1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display apparatus and a display driving method, and more particularly to a display apparatus and a display driving method suitable for driving a plasma display panel (PDP).
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, surface-discharge AC plasma display apparatuses have been commercially implemented as flat panel display apparatuses, and have come into wide use in such applications as display apparatuses for personal computers, workstations, and the like, as hang-on-the-wall televisions, or as apparatuses for displaying advertisements, information, etc.
The surface-discharge plasma display apparatus has a structure such that a pair of electrodes are formed on the inside surface of a front glass substrate and a rare gas is filled therein; in this structure, when a voltage is applied between the electrodes, a surface discharge occurs at the surface of a protective layer and dielectric layer formed on the electrode surface, resulting in the emission of ultraviolet light. The inside surface of a rear glass substrate is coated with phosphors of three primary colors, red (R), green (G), and blue (B), which when excited by the ultraviolet light, produce visible light to achieve a color display.
In the prior art, there is proposed a display apparatus that is designed to enhance the luminance grayscale resolution by converting input video data into output display data having a smaller grayscale step than the grayscale step of the input video data (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2001-092409: which corresponds to EP-1085495-A2). More specifically, in the plasma display apparatus proposed in the prior art, a fractional luminance subfield whose luminance level weight is smaller than “1” (that is, whose luminance level weight is “0.5”) is additionally provided, and the luminance grayscale resolution is increased by using this fractional luminance subfield, without changing the number of grayscale levels normally used to represent the input video data.
The prior art and its associated problems will be described in detail later with reference to accompanying drawings.